Is Gwyneth losing?

When it comes to Gwyneth Paltrow, I’ve been feeling lately like we’ve been excluded from some joke. Here we are shaking our heads at her embarrassing try, and everyone else, the Hollywood folks, the famous people, they’re all jerking off to it like it’s some kind of newly discovered brilliance. Part of that, of course, is typical celebrity sycophantism, but at the same time, it’s not like she’s losing any ground either. Someone wants to give her a record deal, someone wants to keep bringing her back onto Glee, someone keeps inviting her to sing at major award shows, someone is sending her beautiful cashmere coats and these amaaaaazing boots – seen here last night in London out for dinner with Stella McCartney. And that’s another thing: she’s still rolling with the “right” people – “right” by definition in her mind, that is.

It is certainly fun right now for those who hate her to laugh at what we perceive as stumbles, but in order to truly enjoy the situation, wouldn’t it be more satisfying to see her fall from grace in the eyes of those who matter to her? Because you must know, what YOU think isn’t important to the G. The G is sustained on the opinion of a circle to which you, me, we’ll never belong. And in that environment, I’m not sure that she’s lost a step at all. Even Tina Fey came to her defence recently in an interview with InStyle (source).

So… disappointingly…is she really the loser here? The Chicken Soup sensibility that we’ve all been culturally programmed to follow would dictate that someone who needs to put in so much effort to appear to have it all is far from having it all, I guess. And the old Gwyneth would never want to be perceived as having to put in any effort to achieve the same results, yes, that’s true too. I suppose you could also argue that in throwing herself into all these… projects… she’s avoiding something that’s truly eating away at her former perceived perfection. But these people, her ilk, they don’t keep score by the same standards that we do. They certainly don’t subscribe to Chicken Soup. If they’re bred to believe that infidelity is but a minor inconvenience, if they’re conditioned to accept that love is more pragmatic than it is passionate, if achievement is measured by whether or not you get invited to the most exclusive places, I’m actually not sure Gwyneth is losing as much as we thought she is.